3. Distinguishing Truth from Falsehood

If ideas arise in our minds as reflections of the external world, then the extent to which these ideas are true or false depends upon the accuracy with which they reflect or reproduce” in our minds, the relationships, processes and objects of outside reality. But how can we tell? How can we say, for example, that the ideas of a factory worker may be more valid or truthful than those of a shopkeeper or farmer when all ideas derive from the particular experience of those who hold them?

The answer lies, once again, in the question of practice — in the active way in which we develop our ideas. It is because our knowledge is being continually put to practical use through production, in waging the class struggle, in performing scientific experiments, that we find, as the well known saying has it, that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating." When our plans fail, when our experiments back-fire, when our way of life crumbles, when our strategies are wrecked, we soon discover which ideas match up to the outside world and which do not! We learn the truth by continually testing our ideas in practice — the practice of operating a machine correctly, of producing a leaflet which expresses the mood of the people at a particular time, of successfully hitting the enemy “where he is weak and least prepared," etc. — and because our ideas enable us to change the world through an infinite variety of practical activities, we learn in this way how things really function, what is true and what is false.

But if we judge the validity of our ideas by the extent to which they accurately reflect external reality, how do we account for the existence of ideas which are false? If, in fact, all ideas derive from practical experience and there is no other source (despite what idealists think), why should these ideas not always reflect the real world correctly?

The problem is that “truth” and “falsehood” are not the simple black and white categories that they sometimes seem: the Calvinist “dominie” may imagine that everything his bible tells him is absolutely true and that everything someone else's bible says is absolutely false, but the fact is that once we remember that all ideas are drawn from our practical experience of the world, it is clear that even when ideas are basically false, they will still contain elements of truth in them, and even when ideas are basically true, they will still have elements which are false. Why? Because all ideas, without exception, represent some kind of reflection of what is going on.

Take the concept of apartheid as an extreme example. This concept is regarded by the vast majority of people in South Africa and by world public opinion at large as one of the most deceitful and warped political and social policies ever to be implemented in modern times. And yet, although it is obvious to millions of progressive people that “separate development” is merely a cynical justification for denying democratic rights to the black people who live and work in an integrated economy, to a minority of die-hard reactionaries and white supremacists, apartheid appears as a “moral," even divinely ordained, solution to the country's “problems." Why should this be? Looked at from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of knowledge, the answer can only be that the doctrine of apartheid is not merely a distorted theory of society, it is a distorted theory which reflects a warped and distorted way of life. The theory is inhuman because the practice is inhuman. For the financier who wants to draw vast profits without any “problems," for the capitalist who wants a supply of cheap labour which can be turned on and off like a tap, for the labour aristocrat who wants to keep his job and privileges at his fellow workers' expense, in short, for all who look upon the black people of South Africa as mere objects to be exploited, the doctrine of apartheid has a perverted logic which reflects one of the cruelest forms of capitalist exploitation anywhere in the world.

This is why eliminating apartheid is not, as liberals seem to think, merely a question of a “change of heart” or a “change of mind”; on the contrary, it is because distorted ideas must reflect a distorted reality that a revolution is required which will radically restructure the social relations of production in South Africa, nationalizing the major industries and restoring the land to the people, so that the exploitation of one class by another — the material roots of racism and apartheid can be checked and then eliminated. To change false ideas we need to alter the conditions which give rise to them. This is the Marxist approach to the question of truth.

It follows that just as false and reactionary ideas contain superficial elements of the “truth” in them, for they exist as the reflections of a real world, so likewise do ideas which are basically correct, contain elements of distortion and one-sidedness. The truth, in other words, is both absolute and relative. It is real and yet never complete. This is why serious revolutionaries constantly find it necessary to observe and study, to investigate both theory and reality. Political consciousness needs to be advanced by conscious effort as a regular part of political struggle.

Precisely because we acquire our knowledge through our practical experience in the objective world, this knowledge is always developed as part of an on-going process of discovery, in which, as Lenin puts it, “incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact."[1] We continually deepen our understanding of the real world as science advances, technology improves and our understanding of politics and society grows, and yet, although our expanding body of knowledge increasingly approximates to objective reality, nonetheless, as Engels stresses,

each mental image of the world system is and remains in actual fact limited, objectively by the historical conditions and subjectively by the physical and mental constitution of its originator.[2]

Such images or reflections are absolutely true to the extent that they correctly reproduce elements of an objectively real world, but they are also of necessity relatively true in that the knowledge of any one individual, like the collective knowledge of all mankind, can never be more than a part of an infinite world which is always changing and developing. This unity of the absolute and the relative holds also of course for our Marxist world-outlook, for while the basic principles of dialectical materialism are true and correctly reflect reality, their truth is dynamic rather than static, for these principles are continually being applied to new circumstances and in new conditions. New aspects of Marxist theory — like the concept of a non-capitalist path to development for the countries of the third world — develop to take account of new situations and possibilities in a changing world. This is why all our ideas have a relative as well as an absolute side to them. Political tactics which may be correct at one time — like the ANC's policies of peaceful resistance pursued until the end of the 1950s— have to be altered as conditions change: the resort by the Nationalist government to acts of bloody repression like Sharpeville and the introduction of police terror and torture on a massive scale, all made it necessary to develop a strategy of armed struggle. What is true at a particular time is not necessarily true forever.

In order to understand more of what is involved in this process of deepening our knowledge of the world through the progress of science, technology and the class struggle, I turn now to briefly examine the question of: [...click "Next"]